Astroblast 2006

On Saturday 22nd April 2006 I attended Astroblast 2006. The following is my recollection of the day.

I first saw Astroblast advertised by Robin Scagell on the Society for Popular Astronomy‘s BB back in February 2006 and, at the time, made a note in my diary as it sounded like it could be an enjoyable family day out. Given that I have a wife who isn’t anywhere near as interested in the subject as I am, and given that I have a young son, this looked like it was going to offer a good mix of things that would interest me and things that would entertain the family as a whole.

The day started off pretty well in that parking wasn’t that much of a problem. When we arrived at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy we were told that all parking spaces had been taken but that another car park, just down the road, had been opened for our use. Sure enough, there were plenty of spaces and it was a 5 minute walk back up the road to the IaO. I don’t recall this been done during the last year's SPA convention so, hopefully, this is something they’ll keep in mind.

When we arrived at the Hoyle Building we were greeted by a couple of Imperial stormtroopers and a group of Jedi (much to the delight, and terror, of my son). Later on in the day we also got to bump in Darth Vader himself. Having various characters from the Star Wars movies (provided by the UK Garrison Costuming Club from what I could tell) wandering around the place was a nice touch. Not exactly astronomy, obviously, but fun for children (and adults like myself who grew up with Star Wars).

One of the first things we did after getting into the building was head over to the Green Witch to see if there were any tickets left for the planetarium show – lucky for us there seemed to be just three tickets left and they were for the next available showing (which was about 20 minutes later). We used up the time in between by having a quick wander around the stalls in the Hoyle Building and then headed over to the show.

The planetarium show was provided by Stardome Planetarium, one of those inflatable planetariums that are often used in schools – this was the first time I’d ever seen one, let alone been in one. I was mostly impressed with it. It was never going to be as impressive as a “proper” planetarium but given that it was, in essence, a lantern inside a tent the effect was pretty good. My only real complaint is that the show was probably a little too long given how many children there were in the audience (although I was also impressed how well behaved they all were – the only real problem during the whole show was an adult who seemed to think the show would be better if they turned on a torch during the darkest part). Even then, my complaint is probably a little unfair given that it would have been very hard for the presenter to really know what sort of audience he was going to get at an event like this.

After the planetarium show we went to find the “planet factory”. This was a really neat idea. Take boxes and boxes of polystyrene balls, boxes of sticks to stick the balls on, and lots and lots of paint. Oh, yes, and children. This was a great mixture of fun and creativity. I was quite impressred with how many planets had been created (there were lots of them left drying in the Sun while people went off to do other things) and I was even more impressed with how good some of them looked.

After spending some time on the “factory floor” (”just one more daddy!“) we left the planets we’d created and went for a wander around the telescopes. Sadly we only managed to get to have a look inside the dome of the Northumberland telescope (somehow we managed to miss the opening times of the dome for the 36" 'scope) but that was quite impressive.

TODO: Rockets
TODO: SPA
TODO: BAA
TODO: Green Witch (Good selection of stuff for kids)
TODO: Other stalls
TODO: Talks (hard to attend with small child in tow)
TODO: Solar halo etc.

TODO: Read some criticism (on SPA BB for example) – some of it fair, some not IMO.
TODO: Would attend again